Mermaids in Paradise: A Novel (34 page)

I felt like crying again.

“Deb, no, hey—this was a victory. Maybe not ours, exactly, but still, it was a victory for the mermaids. The Venture didn’t get to them, and maybe some small part of that timing was us. Maybe, partly, with our distractions and our interference, we held them off until the whales came. Think of it that way, babe.”

“I’ve always loved your optimism,” I said.

“Deb, look. The reefs are going to weather this invasion. All right? So don’t be discouraged.”

“But if we hadn’t gone public with the mermaids, there wouldn’t
be
these crowds,” I said listlessly.

“But if we hadn’t gone public with the mermaids, who knows? Maybe the GM wouldn’t have had to take time out to intimidate us on the beach, with his posse. Maybe they would have found the mermaids themselves. Before the blue whales ever got there. And the mermaids would be in a cage right now. And a lot of them might be dead.”

I shook my head. It sounded paper-thin, to me, Chip’s logic. The truth was, I thought, we’d tried our best, we really had. But we’d been bulls in a china shop, and now the reefs were being invaded by hordes of our very own barbarians.

For the first time I had a glimpse of something: I got an inkling of why Chip was obsessed with the Heartland. He knew it was our fault, the ape denial, the fear of science, the epidemic of obesity. He knew we’d done it to ourselves, made our own village into idiots. We’d put our best-looking idiots on thrones, those empty pawns and shiny dolls. And then we had the balls to act surprised—even superior!—when people began to worship them.

Some people worshiped the false idols and in the face of that some other people turned away. We weren’t this sordid mass, they wanted to think, we were children of God, special and better than the rest. Once you weren’t beautiful, you needed God to love you.

Between the two groups a fault line rumbled, ominous.

“. . . I know your leg hurts,” Chip was saying. “But the doctor says it’s going to be fine, maybe some light scarring. As early as tomorrow, he said—as long as you keep a waterproof bandage over the part without the skin—you can maybe go swimming.
I’ll take care of you, honey. Let’s relax, OK? We’ll have that lazy honeymoon you wanted, I promise. We really will. St. John’s is like, rainforest green, one big national park with mountains, and around the edges is a ring road that stops at tons of white-sand beaches. You can snorkel on every one of them, if you want. We won’t do any diving. We’ll take it easy.”

We lay there for a while, with the babble of conversation from the pool, a splashing, every now and then, and the whir of the ceiling fan.

Chip kissed me, and so forth.

“OK,” I said finally.

FOR OUR LAST
night with everyone he carried me out to the pool—just for the hell of it, since of course I could have walked, albeit painfully. The leg looked savaged, but it was just lacerations. He laid me down on a chaise and people took turns coming over to see me. I felt like a gimpy queen.

Someone had picked up takeout food, on the pretext of taking the burden of cooking off Janeane, and everyone (except Janeane) was chowing down on pulled pork and fish tacos. A few of the soldiers had come, dressed in their civvies, cargo pants, swim trunks, et cetera, which made them look much younger—like college kids with neat haircuts, I thought, or maybe high school jocks.

Guns age a person, I decided. If you want to look young, you probably shouldn’t carry one.

Miyoko was talking to Sam, who looked enthusiastic about the conversation; Thompson and Gina seemed to be playing darts, with a board stuck up on the trunk of a palm tree. Rick and Ronnie were talking to Janeane, who lay in a hammock knitting, as Ellis (one arm in a sling), Simonoff and Nancy pored over some maps spread out on a table and the doctor floated in the pool ensconced in a pink lifesaving ring. Raleigh leaned over the food table, putting together a plate for me.

Of all of them, I thought, watching people stand around in their drinking-and-talking gaggles, I’d miss Steve and Janeane the most. Their niceness was warming. Even their boringness grew on you after a while, because they meant so well. They really did.

And Raleigh: I liked him too. I liked so many people, when I got to know them, and when I was drinking.

When I was drinking I could almost be Chip, I thought, almost that nice.

But not quite.

I wouldn’t think of the crowds, I told myself, I wouldn’t think of them, the crowds with their swords burning.

That’s right. I would refuse to think of them.

I watched as one of Gina’s darts struck Thompson on the hand. He shrieked. I nursed my smooth bourbon on the rocks, looked up at the darkening sky. There was the planet Venus, and a few stars were out; purple was turning black. The end of our day was ending.

“You should come down and see us, man,” said Chip to Steve.

They were sitting beside me in yellow-and-white deck chairs; Steve was squeezing some kind of resistance ball that’s supposed to make your hands stronger.

“You live in the Bay Area, right?” persisted Chip. “Five-hour shot straight down the 1. We’re
literally
just a couple minutes off the PCH. Brentwood. Stay overnight! Plenty of space. We’ll move Deb’s Pilates machine out of the guestroom. That thing’s gathering dust anyway, isn’t it, honey?”

“Kind of it is,” I admitted.

“Hey, I really wish we could,” said Steve. “Just not sure there’ll be time.”

He looked up then, tipping his head back pensively, and Chip and I did the same.

In the sky the asteroid was blazing. That earth-crosser was so near, these days. I’d almost forgotten.

“True dat,” said Chip, nodding.

“You read the GAO report?” asked Steve.

“Of course,” said Chip.

We’d all read the report, something from Congress that the papers and blogs picked up. It’d been translated into more than a thousand languages; when Chip saw that figure he said he didn’t even know there
were
that many. (Gina ridiculed him.) Anyway the study said the asteroid could probably have been stopped, the impact prevented if we’d prepared in time. Well, technically it could have been redirected, not stopped per se, deflected just microscopically along its path so that it wouldn’t hit and wouldn’t bring on the extinction event. Like in a high-concept blockbuster movie, we could have knocked it
off its course with a missile, or maybe a few. Apparently, some of that Hollywood shit was true.

But the time for whining had passed.

So in the end we’d failed the whales, much as we’d failed the mermaids. I wondered if they already knew. Did they see to the end, the way we did?

I wished there were some perfect retreat for those whales and those mermaids—the beauty we knew, the beauty we thought we’d made up or maybe only dreamed, we’d never been quite sure. I wished there was a safe haven for them, locked deep in the endless blue.

We smiled at each other, Chip and Steve and I, sadly. I flattered myself that the men were thinking fondly of each other and of me, as I was thinking so fondly of them—of all the milling friends and partygoers—longing for what couldn’t be.

When it came to the future, we all acted
as if
. Only way to proceed, said Gina firmly, and Chip and I agreed.

So we did the wedding, we did the honeymoon. There’d never be a better time for it.

Still there are instants when it pierces me, it pierces all of us—we all have those instants of remembering—a terrible love that passes in a flash, our terrible love of everything.

It brings us closer than we’ve ever been.

But the closeness is fleeting.

Tears stood on my bottom eyelids again, twice in a single day now, but I wouldn’t let them spill over—not this time. This time I restrained myself, determined to keep my personality intact.
From now on, that’s what I’d do. No more slipups. It wasn’t the best personality, I’d been reminded of that recently, but it was mine. You work with what you’ve got.

I’d keep my personality intact, I decided. Give it the old college try.

I raised my cup and toasted; the others raised theirs too. We went on smiling, smiling, and smiling, until the very moment when the whiskey touched our lips.

ALSO BY LYDIA MILLET

Magnificence

Ghost Lights

How the Dead Dream

Love in Infant Monkeys

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

Everyone’s Pretty

My Happy Life

George Bush, Dark Prince of Love

Omnivores

FOR YOUNGER READERS

Pills and Starships

The Shimmers in the Night

The Fires Beneath the Sea

Copyright © 2015 by Lydia Millet
Illustrations by Sharon McGill

All rights reserved
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